SEM Punch

This is good news - last night I received an email from Yahoo with a big headline “The New Sponsored Search Is Now Live!” Finally. After Yahoo hasn’t really talked about Panama in their earnings call, they still seem set to roll it out in Q4 of 2006.

It appears that transfers of current accounts to the new platform are made gradual, with assistance of Yahoo. This is likely to take a couple of months; my guess is that larger advertisers get their account(s) migrated very early on. An upgrade center is publicly available, although it only offers some information without any way to actually upgrade. Advertisers will need a new account login for the new platform, which they can either wait for or request. I am not going to ramble on about the procedure of upgrading - check out the upgrade center or this upgrade brochure (PDF).

What’s new in Panama? Not much, to be honest. But here some quick facts:

1. Accounts exist of campaigns, which may contain up to 1,000 Ad groups; ad groups can contain up to 1,000 keywords.
2. Ad groups can contain up to 20 creatives.
3. There will be a bulk upload mechanism available for small advertisers as well. Currently bulk uploading is available to advertisers that spend more that $6,000 per year.
4. I heard rumors that there will be a Google import tool, which allows advertisers to import Google keywords & account structure into Yahoo.
5. Bids will be hidden in the marketplace.

This is not a comprehensive list of new features, of course, but you get the idea - Yahoo copies Google’s platform. I think that is okay, as long as they make sure their performance improves. The current (old) search platform often breaks down for advertisers with a large keyword portfolio.

This is also probably a good point to note that Yahoo is releasing an API to go along with the new platform. I’ve read the documentation and in terms of functionality it looks very similar to Google’s. I am not sure what the pricing or availability for the new API will be. But currently access to the old DTC-XML API and the new API is locked - advertisers that want to develop against either one will only get access to the new platform, once it is fully deployed.

P.S.: I appologize for the lack of posts during the last month…due to lots of work I had little time to post, but will try to be better about it.

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